Report on the introduction to a debate held at the annual general meeting of the Association for Higher Education on Reformed Principles in Rotterdam on June 25, 1891. At issue in the debate was the advisability of appointing a professor in psychiatry while the Vrije Universiteit did not yet have a faculty of medicine. The need for trained Christian doctors and psychiatrists at the Veldwijk Psychiatric Institute in Ermelo prompted the debate.

The introduction begins with an excursus about the various theories of medical behavior, the orientation toward materialism in contemporary medical scholarship, and the responsibility that the Christian view of humanity imposes upon Christian medical scholarship. Kuyper then states that he will support the appointment of a professor in psychiatry provided that the scholar will both teach according to the spirit of Christianity and satisfy a few strict preconditions. He expresses doubt that a faculty of medicine can be established any time soon.

In 1907 the Vrije Universiteit received both a psychiatric clinic and a professorial chair in psychiatry and neurology—the beginning of its faculty of medicine—due to the efforts of the Association for Christian Treatment of the Mentally Ill in the Netherlands, of which the asylum Veldwijk in Ermelo (presently GGZ Centraal Veldwijk) was the first member (1886).